When The Levee Breaks
by dharmamonkey
Summary: Booth, battling a rising tide of fear, anger and desperation after learning that Brennan has been assaulted in New Orleans, drops everything to go to her. Set at the very beginning of the episode "Man in the Morgue" (1x19).


**When The Levee Breaks**

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By: dharmamonkey  
Rating: T  
Disclaimer: _I don't own Bones. I am, however, interested in renting Booth. A five-hour minimum would apply._

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**A/N: **_My muse was giving me a bit of trouble this weekend, bogging me down in a couple of ruts I couldn't seem to work my way out of. Looking for a jump-start, I turned to one of my favorite Season 1 episodes, "Man in the Morgue," and rewatched the opening scenes. I realized that the lead-in to that episode was ripe for a bit o' monkey fill-in of the Boothy brainspace. This is the result. It's not my best work, but it's short and hopefully it's worth the read._

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_Cryin' won't help ya, prayin' won't do ya no good  
__Cryin' won't help ya, prayin' won't do ya no good  
__When the levee breaks, mama, ya got to go…__  
_

~Led Zeppelin, 1971 (based on 1929 song by Kansas Joe & Memphis Minnie)

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The second I heard the line go dead, I knew what I had to do.

There was no question in my mind, and no hesitation. Sitting up in bed, I looked over as the clock's bright green digits blinked back at me. It was 6:15 in the morning. Rubbing the sleep out of my eyes, I swung my legs over the side of the bed, curling my toes in pain as the arches of my feet burned like a hot lance as soon as I stood up.

_"Aww, fuck," _I hissed as I stumbled into my closet and rummaged around in the half-dark until I found the duffel bag I use when I go to the gym. I held it up and gave it a quick precautionary sniff, then decided it smelled alright and padded over to my dresser. I grabbed a pair of jeans, a handful of boxers, a few T-shirts and a couple of balled-up pairs of socks, tossing the whole lot of it into the duffel bag along with whatever I could find to throw into my shaving kit. Realizing that I didn't have any of those itty bitty travel-sized bottles of shampoo or shaving cream, I hesitated for a second, then decided that whatever I didn't pack, I'd buy when I got there.

Glancing at my watch, I knew I had to get my ass to the airport and I didn't have time to screw around. Hell, I didn't even shower or shave. I just took a quick piss, threw on a clean shirt and yesterday's jeans, ran a wet comb through my hair, zipped up my duffel bag, turned off the lights and ran out of my apartment. I was halfway to the airport when I realized that I'd been in such a hurry, I hadn't even tied my shoes.

Lady luck was on my side, I guess, because I made it to Reagan National in time to snag the last open seat on the 8:35 flight to New Orleans. After clearing security (as a duly-sworn federal law enforcement officer, I don't have to wait in the TSA line, thank God, because I'd probably have missed the damn flight if I had), I literally ran to my gate. I got there just in time to hear the lady make the last-call announcement for my flight:

"_U.S. Airways is now boarding all passengers for Flight 3225 to New Orleans at Gate C6. If you are a confirmed passenger on Flight 3225 to New Orleans, please make your way to Gate C6 for an on-time departure..."_

I stood there with my well-worn and carelessly-stuffed Reebok duffle bag hanging from my shoulder, my heart pounding in my chest and throbbing in my ears as I heard her voice play over and over again in my head.

"_Something happened to me, Booth," _she told me when I'd answered the phone with a gravelly croak after being roused fifteen minutes before my alarm was supposed to go off._ "I don't know what...it's all kind of hazy...a blur, really...but the ambulance and police are on their way...and, well...I don't think I'm gonna be able to make it home today so you'll need to reschedule our meeting with Deputy Director Cullen…"_

I knew something was horribly wrong seconds after I answered the phone. Her voice (which is normally strong and clear in that husky, low, sexy way that that's uniquely Bones) was hesitant and confused, distant and dazed, and I knew that something bad had happened to her. She assured me that she was fine, that I didn't need to come because she'd called Detective Harding of the New Orleans Police Department and that she was going to get checked out at Tulane Medical Center, but after hearing her voice like that—wavering and thin, almost vacant—I knew that I had to go to her, and that no force on heaven or earth was going to keep me from her.

There wasn't anything I wouldn't do for her.

From the very beginning, I was willing to put my career on the line to work with her, and the thought had never crossed my mind that it might not be worth the price. She was worth it. I knew it the moment I saw her in that lecture hall at American. Maybe it didn't make any sense—and in a way, I guess, it still doesn't—but I just knew. I'd lay it _all_ on the line for her: my career, my reputation, my life, my soul. All of it.

Something hard and fierce coiled deep inside of me as I felt my worry and my fear soak into every dark crevice in my head. _She's gonna be okay, _I told myself. _She's tough as fucking nails. She's gonna be okay. _I repeated that as a mantra, over and over again in my mind, but I still felt that fear knotted tight in the pit of my belly. I felt helpless and so far away. _I'm comin', Bones, _I thought, wishing there was a way I could just will her to know she wasn't alone, that whatever had happened to her, she wouldn't have to face it alone. Whatever it was, I would help her through it. A hundred unnamable, unmentionable images flickered in my mind and I wished there was a way that, whatever it was, it could have been me. Whatever had happened to her, I'd wished it had happened to me, and that I could have been the one to take that pain for her.

Because I would.

I knew that now. I would do anything for her—anything at all. I'd take a bullet for her. I'd die for her. I'd kill for her. An angry energy crackled through my limbs as I remembered standing in that alley in Little Salvador, jamming the business end of my .357 into the roof of that gangbanger's mouth and feeling the muscles of his face twitch as he winced at the pain. There's little doubt in my mind that I would have gone back there and blown his goddamn head off if anything, _anything, _had happened to her.

_Oh God, _I thought. _What happened to her? _I could feel my nostrils burn as I closed my eyes and tried to ignore that dark swirl of anger and fear that was roiling around in my empty belly as I threw my duffel bag into the overhead and took my seat. _It's gonna be okay, Bones. _I took a deep breath and leaned my head back. _It's gonna be okay. We're gonna figure this out._

I sat on that plane, squeezed into a middle seat between a CDC guy who had the aisle seat and a middle-aged woman who slept through the whole flight, and drank cup after cup of weak airline coffee as if somehow the caffeine itself would help drown out the hundred thoughts that rattled around my head during the painful eternity it took to wind my way from D.C. to New Orleans. The dull murmur of the plan's engines wasn't enough to muffle the hum of my worries, but pumping Led Zeppelin, Scorpions, Alice in Chains, Soundgarden and The White Stripes into my earbuds with the volume cranked up as loud as I could physically tolerate seemed to give me something to channel that energy into while I tried not to think about how slowly the minutes were ticking by. Two hours and three cups of coffee later, I landed at Louis Armstrong New Orleans International Airport so goddamned keyed up I practically trampled the CDC guy in my rush to get off the plane.

A friend in the local field office found a way to get me a Tahoe to use for the week but he wasn't going to be able to get the truck to me until after noon and I wasn't going to wait, so I ran from the gate to bag claim where I grabbed a cab to Tulane Medical Center. I told the cabbie I was in a hurry but after ten minutes of staring at brake lights, I began to get frustrated—well, more than frustrated, really. I sort of lost my shit thinking about Bones and what might have happened to her so I leaned forward and flashed my badge where he could see it. _"I'm FBI, buddy," _I told him. _"Let's get a fucking move on it, pal, okay? Forget about the cops. You won't get no fuckin' ticket. Just get me to that hospital as quick as fuckin' humanly possible, capiche?" _His dark, beady eyes widened and not two seconds later, the cab lunged forward as he leaned hard into the gas pedal and merged onto I-10.

I threw a couple of twenties at the wide-eyed cabbie as he pulled up in front of the entrance to Tulane's Emergency Room. The blood was roaring in my ears as I jogged up to the door and waited for the automatic doors to whisk open.

_I'm here, Bones, _I thought as I walked up to the ER check in-desk and asked to see her. Flashing my badge and a smile, I coaxed the receptionist into letting me through and thanked her with a quick jerk of my chin as I walked through the secure doors. I'd been told she was in Exam Room Six, and set about to finding her, walking right past the nurse's station as if I belonged there (which I long ago learned was the key to getting into places you aren't supposed to be). I didn't get very far before I felt a tap on my shoulder and turned around to find a scowling duty nurse yammering something to me about unauthorized access to patient areas. I waved her off and kept walking, quickly scanning the numbers on the exam-room doors. I saw "6" on one of the doors on the right and turned the handle as I shoved the door open with my shoulder.

"Sir," the nurse bellowed at me, grabbing at my jacket as I began to open the door. "Sir, you can't go in there."

_The fuck I can't, _I thought as I shrugged her hand off of me and pushed the door open.

_Oh Jesus, _I muttered, my gut sinking the second I saw her. _Oh God, Bones..._

She was sitting on the examination table in a light blue hospital gown. Her face was bruised, her lip busted and she had an inch-long cut running from her hairline towards her right eye that they'd stitched up with what looked like eight or ten stitches. Her beautiful blue eyes were as dazed as her voice had sounded on the phone a few hours earlier and my gut clenched at seeing her this way. I wanted to wrap my arms around her, pull her against my chest and assure her it was going to be okay, then I was gonna find the son of a bitch who did this to her and rip the motherfucker's balls off with my bare goddamn hands.

"Booth," she said as she turned to face me, her husky voice tired and reedy. "I told you not to come." I knew by the way she said it and the way she rolled her eyes at me that she knew I would come anyway, no matter what she said.

"Who's this?" said a snappy-suited black woman with lightly-frosted curly hair whose pointed look screamed _cop_ louder than a shiny nickel-plated badge would have.

"He's FBI," Bones told her. "We're sort of partners."

Her words came through to my ears as a liquid murmur because my entire mind was temporarily stuck in neutral, stunned by the way she looked. I couldn't tear my gaze away from how banged-up she was. She looked like she'd been mugged, or worse, and the thought of what might have happened to her turned my stomach. I could feel my hands shaking as I leaned into the exam table and thought of what I would do to the bastard that did this to her. _Easy, buddy, _I told myself. _Bones first. Focus on Bones. Deal with the motherfucker who did this later. _I licked my lips and tried to take the sort of centering breath I learned in Sniper School, then looked over my shoulder at the NOPD detective.

"Guy flies down from D.C.?" she drawled. "You're more than 'sort of.'"

_Fuck you, lady, _I thought to myself, wanting nothing more than to tell that cop to go pound salt. I hadn't been in that room more than fifteen seconds and already the lady cop's smug attitude was beginning to seriously piss me off.

"Yeah, that's great," I told the detective, waving her off as I turned back to Bones. "You remember anything?"

I saw the doctor in the corner of the room look up and shoot me a strange look, but I ignored him, too. Bones narrowed her eyes and sighed. "The tray falling over," she said weakly.

I was at a loss, and I felt panic swirling in the pit of my belly as I saw the blank, helpless look in her eyes. My partner with a photographic memory who picks up on everything couldn't seem to remember a fucking thing about what had happened to her, or even what had happened before that. I turned to the doctor and jerked my thumb at her as I asked him, "Why can't she remember anything?"

Though I was in the middle of flood-ravaged New Orleans surrounded by native Louisianans (because everybody who wasn't from Louisiana got the fuck out of there in the wake of Katrina), what Bones called my _"protective instincts"_ were aroused and so I found myself speaking with a harder-core Philly accent than I usually do, even when dealing with gangster types up north. I could tell by the way that the doctor looked at me that my manner and my accent made him a little suspicious, but I think he saw that, obnoxious as I was, I was there for Bones, so he didn't give me the brush-off that the NOPD detective behind me seemed all too ready to give.

"Well, it could be the head injury," he said thoughtfully.

Before he could explain, Bones jumped in—and the fact that she did gave me a flicker of hope that, whatever happened to her, it hadn't extinguished that fiery, ballsy spirit of hers. She pointed to her bandaged wrist as she began to rattle off the litany of her injuries. "Hairline stress fracture on my right distal radius, concussion, slight fever, torn earlobe. I lost one of my favorite earrings." She reached up and pulled a dangly silver earring out of her right ear and frowned as she showed it to me.

"You're worried about an earring?" I asked her, immediately regretting the harshness of my tone. I couldn't get over how banged-up she was and the fact that she couldn't remember a fucking thing about the last twenty-four hours. "You should really be worried about losing a whole day."

"I know, it's stupid," she admitted, which proved that she was totally off-kilter and had been thrown for a serious loop, because the woman I'd been spending the last nine months working with would have, under normal circumstances, more or less told me to go fuck myself if I had chastised her with that kind of tone. There was little doubt in my mind that she was messed up—battered and bruised physically as well as having her melon jiggled around—and I knew then that I'd made the right decision to defy her and come down from D.C. to help her out. "But these earrings were my mother's." She held that dangly little earring in her hand like a talisman, as if it was some kind of anchor to the hours and minutes before it all went black and, apparently, all hell broke loose for her.

The doctor spoke up again with his strangely-soothing, sing-songy bayou accent and tried again to answer my question. "Amnesia caused by any traumatic event, injury or drug, can erase memories before the event, not just after."

_Maybe she's been drugged,_ I remember telling myself. I'm not exactly sure why I thought that was somehow better than amnesia induced by an injury or psychological trauma. Maybe it was because I thought—right, wrong or indifferent—that if the amnesia was because she'd been drugged, then the amnesia would wear off when the drug wore off, and she'd be back to normal in no time flat. It was wishful thinking on my part, I know, but I was so scared for her then, I guess I wasn't really thinking rationally either.

"Great, we'll just wait for a tox screen," I told the attending physician.

He shrugged and said, "It's gonna be at least 24 hours." His Louisiana drawl made it sound like _"twenny-fowah ow-wahs."_

"Twenty-four hours?" I groused. _What the fuck? _I thought.

"Well," the doctor said with a faint smile that, at the time, I took as condescending but I realize now was his own almost gallows-humor way of dealing with the fact that even the most basic infrastructure around there was still minimally functional (if at all). "Most of the labs in the area were destroyed by the hurricane."

No sooner did he fall silent when the detective behind me piped up again. "We'll find out what happened," she said, her faintly-accented New Orleans drawl edged with an attitude that was really beginning to piss me off. Her eyes swiveled over to meet mine, then glanced over to Bones before coming back to meet mine again. "You just take care of your…uh_…partner_."

The sarcasm in her voice made my simmering blood begin to boil, and all I did was shoot her a paint-peeling look of disdain before realizing I either was going to have to ignore her or strangle her, and knowing that the latter wasn't going to do Bones any good, I decided I was going to ignore everybody in that room other than the woman I came there to help.

_To hell with the rest of 'em, _I told myself.

I felt my jaw tighten, my teeth clenching hard enough I swore I could feel my molars ache, but I just shot the cop and the doctor one last look before I tuned them out and turned to Bones, curling my finger under her chin before tilting it up and gently turning her head to face me so I could inspect her injuries myself.

_I'm gonna take care of you, Bones, _I told her silently. _Don't you worry about a thing, baby. We're gonna get you all fixed up and we're gonna find out what happened to you, and we're gonna get the sons-o'-bitches that did this to you. _I didn't care if I had to take on the whole fucking city of New Orleans. I was going to take care of her, and rip the head off anybody who tried to lay a goddamn finger on her.

She was my partner, and nobody messes with my partner and gets away with it.

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**A/N: ** _So it wasn't much, I know, but I hope you enjoyed it anyway. Who doesn't love a little bit of protective!Booth? *sound of crickets* I know I sure do._

_Anyway, I hope you found that of some value. But don't leave me in the dark. Share your thoughts as I've shared mine. Consider leaving a review._

**Shameless plug for a couple of Dharmasera pieces coming up: **_We're working on a few things for you all, including a new chapter of the 9th crossover piece "Hand to Hand," a few more "Compendium" crossover oneshots, and a new chapter of our 16th century historical AU fic, "The Return." Stay tuned. They're coming._


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